The Lions of Al-Rassan (20 page)

As one, in that moment, the courtiers looked to the Muwardis by the doors, the only men in the room bearing arms. The veiled ones had remained inexplicably motionless through all of what had just taken place. Ibn Khairan noticed the direction of the glances.

“Mercenaries,” he said gravely, “are mercenaries.”

He did not add, but might have, that the tribesmen of the desert would not be sparing any moments of prayer for the secular, degenerate worse-than-infidel who had just died. As far as the Muwardis were concerned,
all
of the kings of Al-Rassan merited approximately the same fate. If they all killed each other the starlit visions of Ashar might yet be fulfilled in this land.

One of the veiled ones did come forward then, moving towards the dais. He passed near to the woman, Zabira, who had remained motionless after rising. Her hands were at her mouth.

“Not quite,”
he said softly, but the words carried, and were remembered.

Then he ascended the dais and removed the Muwardi veil from the lower part of his face and it could be seen by all assembled in the room that this was, indeed, the princely heir of Cartada’s realm, Almalik ibn Almalik, he of the nervous eyelid, who his father had said looked like a leper.

He looks rather more like a desert warrior at the moment. He is also, as of this same moment, the king of Cartada.

The other three Muwardis now draw their swords, without moving from where they stand by the doors. One might have expected an outcry from the court, but stupefaction and fear impose their restraints upon men. The only sound in the audience chamber for a frozen instant is the breathing of terrified courtiers.

“The guards on the other side of the doors are mine as well, by the way,” says young Almalik mildly. His afflicted eyelid, it can be seen, is not drooping or twitching at this time.

He looks down upon the toppled body of his father. After a moment, with a swift, decisive movement of one foot, he rolls the dead king off the dais. The body comes to rest at the feet of the woman, Zabira. The son sits down smoothly among the remaining pillows of the dais.

Ammar ibn Khairan sinks to his knees in front of him.

“May holy Ashar intercede with the god among the stars,” he says, “to grant you long life, O great king. Be merciful in your grandeur to your loyal servants, Magnificence. May your reign be crowned with everlasting glory in Ashar’s name.”

He proceeds to perform the quadruple obeisance.

Behind him, the poet Serafi suddenly comes to his senses. He drops to the mosaic tiles as if smitten behind the knees and does the same. Then, very much as if they are grateful for this cue as to how to proceed, the men in the audience chamber all perform full obeisance to the new king of Cartada.

It is seen that the only woman in the room, the beautiful Zabira, does so as well, touching the floor with her forehead beside the body of her dead lover, graceful and alluring as always in the movements of her homage to the son.

It is observed that Ammar ibn Khairan, who has been searched for through the whole of Al-Rassan, now rises to his knees and stands, without invitation from the dais.

It is also a source of belated, devastating wonder to those now imprisoned in the room by the drawn swords of the Muwardis, how they could have failed to identify him before. No one looks quite like ibn Khairan, with those unconscionably blue eyes. No one moves like him. No one’s arrogance quite matches his. With the headcloth removed his signature earring gleams—with amusement one could be forgiven for thinking. He will have been here in Cartada for a long time, it now becomes clear. Perhaps in this very room. A number of men in the audience chamber begin rapidly scanning their memories for remarks of an injudicious sort they might have made about the disgraced favorite during his presumed absence.

Ibn Khairan smiles and turns to survey them all. His smile is vividly remembered, if no more comforting than it has ever been.

“The Day of the Moat,” he says, to no one in particular, “was a mistake in a great many ways. It is never a good idea to leave a man with no real alternatives.”

For Serafi the poet this is incomprehensible, but there are wiser men than he standing among the columns and beneath the arches. Ibn Khairan’s remark will be recollected, it will be expounded upon. Men will hasten to be the first to elucidate its meaning.

Ibn Khairan,
they will say, whispering in bathhouses or courtyards, or in the Jaddite taverns of the city,
was meant to bear the responsibility for the executions in Fezana. He had grown too powerful in the king’s eyes. He was to be curbed by this. No one would ever trust him again.
Heads will nod knowingly over sherbet or forbidden wine.

With this one cryptic sentence, the dialogues of the next days have been set in motion, or so it seems.

It is an old truth, however, that events, whether large or small, do not always follow upon the agendas of even the most subtle of men.

Behind ibn Khairan, the new king of Cartada finishes arranging the pillows of the dais to his satisfaction and says now, quietly, but very clearly, “We are indulgent of all of your obeisances. No man of you need fear us, so long as he is loyal.” No mention of the woman, a number of them note.

The king continues, as ibn Khairan turns back to him. “We have certain pronouncements to make at this commencement of our reign. The first is that all formal rites of mourning will be observed for seven days, in honor of our tragically slain king and father.”

The men of the Cartadan court are masters of reading the smallest nuances of information. None of them see any hint of surprise in the features or the bearing of ibn Khairan, who has just killed the king.

He planned this too,
they decide.
The prince would not have been so clever.

They are wrong, as it happens.

A great many people are about to be proven wrong about Almalik ibn Almalik in time to come. The first and foremost of them stands now, directly in front of the young king and hears the new monarch, his ward and disciple, say, in that same quiet, clear voice, “The second pronouncement must be, lamentably, a decree of exile for our once-trusted and dearly loved servant, Ammar ibn Khairan.”

No sign, no motion, no slightest indication of discomfiture from the man so named. Only one raised eyebrow—a characteristic gesture that might mean many things—and then a question calmly broached: “Why, Magnificence?”

In the mouth of someone who had just killed a king, with the still-warm body lying not far away, it seems a question of astonishing impudence. Given that the killing has doubtless been effected with the countenance and involvement of the young prince, it is also a dangerous query. Almalik II of Cartada looks to one side and sees his father’s sword beside the dais. He reaches out, almost absently, and takes it by the hilt. It can be seen that his unfortunate affliction of the eye has now returned.

“For sins against morality,” the young king says, finally. And flushes.

In the rigid silence that follows this, the laughter of Ammar ibn Khairan, when it comes, echoes from column to arch to the high vaulted ceiling. There is an edge to his amusement though—the discerning can hear it. This is not part of what had been arranged, they are certain of it. And there is an extreme subtlety here, the most quick-minded of them realize. The new king needs to swiftly distance himself from regicide. If he had spoken of murder as a cause of exile that distance would be lost—for his own presence, disguised, in this chamber speaks all that needs to be spoken of how his father’s death has been achieved.

“Ah,” says ibn Khairan now, into the silence, as the echoes of his laughter fade, “moral failings again. Only those?” He pauses, smiles. Says bluntly, “I feared you might speak of killing a king. That dreadful lie some might even now be spreading through the city. I am relieved. Might I therefore live in hope of the king’s forgiving kiss upon my unworthy brow one day?”

The king flushes a deeper shade of crimson. Serafi the poet abruptly remembers that their new monarch is still a young man. And Ammar ibn Khairan has been his closest advisor and friend, and there have been certain rumors for a number of years . . . He decides that he now understands matters more clearly.
The king’s forgiving kiss.
Indeed!

“Time and the stars and the will of Ashar determine such things,” the young king says with determined, formal piety. “We have . . . honored you, and are grateful for your past services. This punishment . . . comes not easily to us.”

He pauses, his voice alters. “Nevertheless, it is necessary. You have until first starlight to be gone from Cartada and seven nights to quit our lands, failing which any man who sees you is free to take your life and is commanded to do so as an agent of the king.” The words are crisp, precise, not at all those of a young man who is anxious and unsure of himself.

“Hunted? Not again!” says Ammar ibn Khairan, his sardonic tones restored. “But, really, I’m so
tired
of wearing a saffron head-cloth.”

The tic in the king’s eye is quite distracting, really. “You had best be gone,” young Almalik says sternly. “What we have now to say are words for our loyal subjects. We shall pray that Ashar guides you towards virtue and enlightenment.”

No wavering, the possibly loyal subjects in the room note. Even faced with mockery and what could be seen as a threat from the subtlest man in the kingdom, the young king is standing his ground. He is doing more than that, they now realize. With a slight gesture the king motions the two Muwardis by the double doors at the far end of the chamber to come forward.

They do so, swords drawn, until they stand on either side of ibn Khairan. He spares them only a brief, amused glance.

“I should have remained a poet,” he says, shaking his head ruefully. “Affairs such as this are beyond my depth. Farewell, Magnificence. I shall live a sad, dark, quiet life of contemplation, awaiting a summons back to the brightness of your side.”

Flawlessly he makes the four obeisances again, then rises. He stands a moment, as if about to add something more. The young king looks at him, waiting, his eyelid twitching. But Ammar ibn Khairan only smiles again and shakes his head. He leaves the room, walking between the graceful columns, across the mosaic tiles, beneath the last arch and out the doors. Not a man there believes his final words.

What the one woman is thinking, watching all of this from where she still stands beside the body of the dead king, her lover, the father of her children, no one can tell. The face of the slain monarch is already turning grey, a known effect of
fijana
poisoning. His mouth is still open in that last, soundless contortion. The oranges remain in their basket where it was set down by ibn Khairan, directly before the dais.

I
t had been, he realized, one of those miscalculations for which a younger man might never have forgiven himself. He was no longer a young man, and his amusement was nearly genuine, his mockery almost all directed inward.

There were other elements in play here, though, and gradually, as he rode east from Cartada late in the day, Ammar ibn Khairan could feel his sardonic detachment beginning to slip. By the time he reached his country estate an afternoon’s easy ride from the city walls a companion might have seen a grave expression on his face. He had no companions. The two servants following on mules some distance behind him, carrying a variety of goods—clothing and jewelry and manuscripts, mostly—were not, of course, privy to his thoughts and could not have seen his countenance. Ibn Khairan was not a confiding man.

There was a safe interval yet before first starlight when he reached his home. It would have been undignified to hasten from Cartada in the morning after Almalik’s decree, but equally it would have been showy and provocative to linger to the edge of dusk—there were those in the city who might have been willing to kill him and then claim they’d seen a star some time before the first one actually appeared. He was a man with his share of enemies.

When he reached his estate two grooms came running to take his horse. Servants appeared in the doorway and others could be seen scurrying about within, lighting lanterns and candles, preparing rooms for the master. He had not been here since the spring. No one had known where he was.

His steward was dead. He had learned that from the prince some time ago: one of the closely questioned figures the ka’id had mentioned this morning.

They ought to have known better, he thought. They probably had, actually: no one, not even the Muwardis, could really have imagined he’d have told the steward who managed his country home where he was hiding. Ibn Ruhala had needed dead bodies, though, evidence of zeal in his search. It occurred to him that, ironically, the ka’id was someone who probably owed him his life now, with the death of the king. Another possible source of amusement. He really couldn’t seem to summon up his usual manner today, however.

It wasn’t the unexpected exile, the prince’s turning upon him. There were reasons for that. He’d have been happier had he been the one to plan and implement this twist, as he’d planned all the others, but truth was, however he felt about it, the new king was not about to be a puppet, for Ammar ibn Khairan or anyone else. Probably a good thing, he thought, dismounting in the courtyard. A tribute to my own training, that I’m banished from the country by the man I’ve just made king.